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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Page never received sex emails from Foley:No sex, many lies and instant messages

Now another piece of the puzzle in the so-called “Foley Scandal” falls into place. And each new piece indicates that the entire thing was exaggerated and subjected to political manipulation both by Democrats wanting to hurt the Republican Party and the Religious Right wanting to smear homosexuals.

Remember how we all learned that a “16-year-old” page working from Louisiana was subjected to “sexual” emails from Foley. That was what we all were led to believe. Then it turned out the page was an expage which means he would have been 17 at the time not 16. Now it appears he never got such emails at all!

Representative Rodney Alexander, who sponsored the page, says that the teen NEVER got such messages from Foley.The New York Times reports: “The former Congressional page ... was neither exposed to nor aware of the sexually explicit instant messages that ultimately led to Mr. Foley’s resignation, the lawmaker who sponsored the page said.”

So exactly what is going on here? Is this a manufactured hysteria that exists on innuendo, anonymous sources, lies and exaggerations? It certainly looks more and more as if that is the case every day.

So the only page mentioned who we know has received sexy emails from Foley is one Jordan Edmund. And he was almost 19 years old when this happened and the messages he sent were not exactly innocent themselves. His attorney has backed away from saying this was not a prank implying that it could have been.

Because the media relied on anonymous sources we never knew to which page they were referring. We got claims about a page working for Rep. Alexander but those claims were then mixed in with the messages between Edmunds and Foley. The media mixed this case up so encouraging such confusion. Had we been told up front that a Congressman exchanged raunchy emails with someone who had once been a page but no longer was, and was well above the age of consent, would there be any of this hysteria? No, especially when we learned there was no sex involved.

And remember all those reports about a drunken Foley allegedly turning up at the dormatory for the pages demanding to be let in. The Bay Area Reporter says the accusations are "unconfirmed" and non-specific, that is no one seems to know when it allegedly happened. And "Capitol Police have conducted a search of their records and can find no report of such an incident. Former police chief Terrance W. Gainer said he could not recall such an incident during his tenure, from 2002 to early this year."

And now the bigots are targeting Congressman Jim Kolbe who’s only sin is being gay. Once again anonymous sources made accusations that Kolbe was too friendly with a former page (again not a working page). The whispers go that Kolbe took the expage camping and was very attentive to him. All this from an anonymous source who refuses to be identified.

But a dozen or so people went on this tour of the Grand Canyon with the Park Service. Park employees escorted the Congressman and all of them say nothing improper happened and that the claims are simply false. Even the former page who was supposedly the victim of Kolbe’s attentions says that none of this is true. So one anonymous source makes the claim, numerous witnesses and the alleged victim all deny that it has validity so what happens? Of course the Congress is now going to investigate Kolbe as well.

The House committee that is conducting the Inquisition, says the New York Times, “intends to examine the conduct of Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, after a request from members of the Congressional page board to include Mr. Kolbe in the inquiry because of complaints the board had received.”

Complaints from whom? No answer is given. Only one person on the trip claims he witnessed alleged attentiveness (nothing more was implied) and he has claimed the right to smear Kolbe anonymously. No one else on the trip saw such things and the “victim” says Kolbe acted properly the entire time. So the so-called victim is not complaining. The others on the trip deny it and the one alleged “witness” refuses to identify himself. So who is doing the complaining?

I would bet that if we look into who has filed complaints against Kolbe we will find that the complainants were not on the trip. I will bet we will find prominent bigots from the Religious Right filing complaints. I will bet we will find people filing complaints based on bad journalism, hysterical blogs, lying web sites and the like. What we won’t find is any “victim” of Kolbe making any such complaint. When anonymous people can make accusations and when people not present can file complaints we have moved well from the rule of law and towards a witch hunt. The more we find out the less there is.